Alan Wake

Most (if not all) developers don’t agree with piracy, but most know that they can’t put a stop to it. So, rather than spend time and effort blocking off every piracy avenue, developers just try to find solace in the fact that, hey, at least pirates are still enjoying a thing they made. If you pirated Alan Wake, Remedy Entertainment wanted you to know that they knew, so they affixed a pirate eyepatch to the game’s hero. Amusingly, it seems like this would ruin the game more than having to deal with a complicated crack would, as the eyepatch definitely broke the delicate, serious atmosphere of the game.

Michael Jackson: The Experience

Like the plastic instrument craze Harmonix started back on the PS2 and reached a fever pitch on the PS3 and Xbox 360, there was a brief period when dancing games were all the rage. Unlike Dance Dance Revolution, these games had you perform “real” dance moves, rather than stomp on big buttons regardless of what the rest of your body was up to. Obviously, this gameplay couldn’t be recreated on portable machines, so a screen-tapping mechanic replaced the real-life dancing. On the Nintendo DS version, the game would pause and vuvuzelas would play over the Michael Jackson tracks, rendering it unplayable.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

Instead of honoring Kane’s memory and being mad that C&C wasn’t able to maintain and nurture its legacy during the era of modern gaming, we should look fondly back on everything the series did well. For the most part, the franchise was very good from top to bottom, from solid RTS action and strategy, to using live-action actors in cutscenes. One installment in the franchise, Red Alert 2, also handled piracy in an amusing way: about half a minute into a level, your units would blow up or die.

Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen

There has been a long-circulating rumor that, if you play either of these Pokémon games that were directly ripped from a Game Boy cartridge, a ferryman would tell you to purchase the game or die. The message used to be listed on various message boards and even big Pokémon wikis, and generally accepted as fact. However, it became difficult to prove the message existed — especially with how quickly piracy and emulation has advanced — so now it’s safer to just be amused at the possibility of the message’s existence, rather than take it as fact.

Spyro: Year of the Dragon

Insomniac dealt with rampant Spyro piracy in the past, and knew that adding an introductory protection layer wouldn’t do much to curb pirates. So, in Year of the Dragon, the developers employed an intricate series of piracy traps. When one layer of piracy was discovered and removed by pirates, that would trigger another, hidden layer to implement itself. The traps were creative, and ranged anywhere from changing the in-game language settings, to removing the game’s items that players need to progress. When those layers were bypassed, damaging the final boss would remove send pirates back to the beginning of the game and erase their save data.

Obviously, a developer’s ideal solution to piracy is to remove it altogether. However, developers understand that pirates can get through just about any safety measure — it’s just a matter of time. So, rather than trying to prevent a pirate from breaking down the door to the house, some developers just fill the house with useless or obnoxious crap.